


just me (before we met)

by stickmarionette



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alien Character(s), Baby Dream Team, Childhood Sweethearts, Family, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-04
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-15 15:13:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickmarionette/pseuds/stickmarionette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for <a href="http://footballkink2.livejournal.com/2971.html?thread=117915#t117915">this genius prompt</a> at footballkink2 on Livejournal: <i>Lionel Messi is, in fact, an alien.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>Bonus points to the press, for once.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>(Not in a Star Trek/Wars kind of way, more like in a "Le Petit Prince" way, that strange mix of serenely self-aware but as inexperienced in this place and this body as a newborn foal)...</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	just me (before we met)

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to the OP, and to meretricula, without whom this fic would not exist.

> The legend at the Nou Camp which reads "mes que un club" (more than a club) has now found its embodiment. For Lionel Messi is more than just a football player. Superlatives have been exhausted, the thesaurus is dog-eared and so when it comes to conjuring up increasingly grand descriptions of the Argentine, commentators and supporters have turned to the other-worldly, the extraterrestrial. It is as if they are talking about an alien. - [The Daily Telegraph](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/players/lionel-messi/7564309/Lionel-Messis-brilliance-is-an-inspiration-and-antidote-to-the-modern-game.html), April 2010

"Wow. That - it was...amazing."

Ibi was beginning to lose that permanently surprised look the new guys always had, but complimenting Leo was apparently a far harder habit to break.

"Thanks."

Not that it was a bad thing. He'd just rather relate to his team-mates as a person than as a football-playing machine, and it's hard to do that when someone looks at him like he's an alien at least once every day.

_You know you're a Barca player when Leo Messi is just that little guy with the bad haircut,_ as Gerard would put it. There's nothing remotely extraordinary about him, really.

**[24 years ago]**

"What do we do with it?"

Jorge's voice sounded too harsh, echoing off the peeling walls of their home. He told himself it was uncertainty, but they could probably all hear the note of fear underneath the surface.

"He's just a baby," Celia said, in the same soft, quiet tone she'd adopted every time she laid eyes on the thing. Like she was afraid of waking it. "What if - what if he grows up different?"

_Different._ They'd be lucky if it could keep to a vaguely human shape. 

"I don't know. We - we don't even know what it wants - "

"Nonsense. The boy's a year old if he's a day, and if you raise him right he'll be yours." 

No matter how old and frail she got, Celia's mother still spoke like the crack of a whip. The sight of her bent frame hovering over the baby in the bundle, sharp eyes narrowed on the perfectly human-seeming little face, gave Jorge an unexpected pang.

"He looks well enough to me. God gave this boy to you two. Are you going to give him up? Lord knows what they'll do to him if you do."

Jorge sighed. What options did they have? "Celia?"

"Mother is right. He's ours," Celia said, pale but determined. It was the first time she had raised her voice above a whisper all night. 

The thing - boy - gave a happy gurgle, and raised his arms towards his grandmother's face.

**[20 years ago]**

They let him play with the other kids. How could they not? He seemed perfectly normal, perfectly human. A little quiet, but that could just be shyness, and he made friends almost in spite of himself.

Nobody in the family ever mentioned where he had come from. It was so easy to forget, after all. In fact, the only reason Celia _couldn't_ was how easily everyone else seemed to accept their paper-thin story. It was almost like the child had some sort of unconscious hypnotic power, enough to prevent any inconvenient questions being asked. 

After a while, the lack of trouble began to seem threatening - what else could he be doing, what else would he do in the future? When she looked into Jorge's eyes, she could see echoes of the same questions that robbed her of sleep.

The answer was obvious in hindsight, and she knew it the moment Matias asked her where Leo had been adopted from. No one outside the family ever questioned that Leo was Celia's son by birth, even though no one could possibly remember a pregnancy that didn't exist and no traces of him existed in Rosario until he was almost a year old. But the family themselves retained their questions. They knew the truth. Whatever he had done to make the world outside safe for him to exist in, Leo was first and foremost Celia's son.

_Is that really enough?_

Celia glanced down, not surprised to find Leo staring up at her mother seated beside her, nothing but trust in his small upturned face. Her hand tightened around his wrist, as if by reflex.

_Of course. Of course it is._

She was still smiling when kindly old Salvador Aparicio came jogging up. Now there was a man who had seen a lot - generations upon generations of Rosario kids growing up while kicking a ball around this small dusty pitch. Some of them had been her cousins and their children, and now they included her own. He always had a kind word for the Cuccittinis. _Lots of talent in the blood,_ he'd say. _Maybe one day one of your children will grow into the next Batistuta._

Her brother would laugh and say _let's hope so, Newell's could use another one_. 

From the chaos on the pitch it certainly didn't look very promising for Matias. Her mother's disapproving frown only disappeared when she noticed Aparicio approaching, breaking into a warm smile as they greeted each other. 

Celia could understand why. When he turned to her, she found herself beaming at his heavily lined face.

"Celia, my dear. Is that your youngest? He looks just like you!"

Celia made sure her smile didn't waver. "Doesn't he? This is Leo. Leo, say hello."

The scary thing was that increasingly, he did. Sometimes he looked more like Jorge than Rodrigo had when he was that age. It was just another frightening new _thing_ that she was coming to accept as part of their life.

Leo blinked up at the stranger, and miracle of miracles, he began to smile. "Hello."

"Ah, hello, young man. Do you want to come play a game?"

Celia froze.

_No. He - he can't -_

"He can't play. He's never done it before."

Aparicio gave her the same reassuring smile she had seen him give over-protective mothers too many times to count. "Doesn't matter. We only need numbers. I'll keep an eye on him for you, I promise."

She didn't dare.

Her mother's hand was a sudden, warm weight on her arm.

"Come on, let him play."

Celia thought she knew what she'd see on her mother's face - the steeliness she had grown up in awe of, no doubt. But she was looking down at Leo, longing written all over his little face, and the faith in her eyes -

"All right."

 

* * *

 

At first, they thought they had discovered another one of Leo's little quirks, another way it made him different. Jorge, when he saw his son play, disagreed vehemently.

"There's no magic there. He's just very talented. Same as some of the other kids I coach."

She raised an eyebrow. "Just as talented?"

"No. Well. More. But that's okay. Celia, it's _brilliant_. He's brilliant," Jorge said, glowing with pride.

She couldn't agree more.

 

* * *

 

"You bought him - "

"It's just a football. He looked like he wanted one."

It was hard to tell, sometimes, just what Leo was thinking. But her mother was right. Football was Leo's new obsession. The moment she gave him his present, she knew something fundamental had changed within him.

Like he was _complete_ for the first time.

**[17 years ago]**

Leo always knew he was different.

No, that was a lie. He had known for as long as he had been aware enough to understand. Before what his human family called the age of five was a bit fuzzy. Colours, images, the smell of his grandmother's hair, the sound of his father's voice - but not much else.

Then one day there was light, and dust, and old Mr Aparicio shouting at him, _kick it, Leo!_

Not for the last time, he hadn't listened, transfixed by the ball at his feet. The first touch had been like the lifting of a heavy veil, the world sharpening into clarity. From then on, his memories became solid, something he could grasp and process along with the rest of the world, bright and so _much_ he could hardly take it, sometimes.

He began with the simple things. _Home._ Home was somewhere very far away, and if he thought about it too hard his world lost all its colours again. 

_Family._ At first he didn't understand why his were not like him, when everyone else had a family of their own blood. Then he met Alessandro who played sweeper at Grandoli, who was not like his parents at all.

_Family doesn't have to have anything to do with blood,_ his father had said when Leo asked, and Leo had to hug him even though he didn't quite know why.

_Football._ Leo slept with the ball his grandmother bought him. His mother hadn't approved at first - he was getting too old for childish comforts, after all, and Leo didn't know how to explain that the first time he read the word _anchor_ he knew exactly what it had to mean.

The first time she saw him wake up curled around it, the look in her eyes said she finally understood.

_Human._ When his teacher said the word, Leo jerked upright with a clatter, not even knowing why. He had been thinking about the next game, sketching formations on Cintia's notepad, and now she was shooting him a worried look.

Human was important because he wasn't. He had always known, but hadn't quite understood what it meant until then that everyone else was.

His family, all his team mates, Cintia who let him copy her homework - none of them had ever felt that strange itch in the back of Leo's head when someone asked questions about where he came from and he had to reach out to make them stop. None of them had ever felt the way his body changed every day to be more like his family-who-were-not-of-his-blood. None of them had that empty place inside where _home_ was supposed to be.

Leo walked home from school alone that day. 

Every time he passed someone on the street, he was terrified they would look at him and know, even though it was impossible. Even though no one could know.

But that thought didn't feel right either. The same part of him that knew without being taught how to make people stop asking questions knew that he had never tried it on his human family. Not ever, not as far as he could remember. 

He remembered only warmth and shelter and his grandmother saying _you're my grandson, don't ever forget that_ , in the tone he will forever associate with the word _pride_.

The first time Leo understood _tears_ , he'd just lost his first game. Until now, he hadn't known being happy could make it happen too.

 

* * *

 

Leo would have been surprised to see Cintia waiting for him at the gate to his house if the back of his head hadn't started itching two streets away. He had tried to wipe his face clean, even though she could probably still tell something was wrong. Girls were scary like that.

Cintia, though, she wasn't just any girl. He hadn't had an image to go with _friend_ until he met her, and she'd smiled back at him when he still wasn't sure if he understood how smiles worked.

"Hey, you ditched me at school. What happened to walking home together?"

"Sorry," he muttered.

There was no way to explain. Could he? All he knew was how to make people stop asking questions. He didn't even have the words.

Except - this was Cintia, the one who always filled in the gaps when he didn't or couldn't say anything. Maybe it would be fine.

"Leo, are you okay?" she said, frowning now - worried. "Talk to me, come on."

"Cintia, I have to tell you something, and you have to promise not to tell anyone else."

It was the fastest he'd ever spoken, the words squeezed out in a rush before he could regret them.

She smiled, then, like she had when they first met. 

"I promise."

 

* * *

 

Home was somewhere very far away. And then one day it wasn't, not anymore, it was right in front of his eyes, in the dust and smoke, in Cintia's smile and his mother's cooking, and it didn't hurt to think about.

**[15 years ago]**

His memory worked in ways he lacked vocabulary to describe, with webs upon interlaced webs of colours and shapes.

This year would always be black, for grandmother. And red, for the visits to the doctor.

 

* * *

 

Leo hadn't properly understood _death_ until it happened in his family. His grandmother was warmth and determination, she made delicious pastries and loved football more than anyone else he knew. Surely, nothing could touch someone so strong.

"Your grandma's sick," his mother had said, her face frozen with what Leo came to recognise as misery. "Very sick."

And then she was gone.

 

* * *

 

Football wasn't the same, after that. 

It had always been the one thing that grounded him, the one thing that made sense. But no matter how many hours he spent kicking his ball against the brick outer walls of his house, the noise in his head refused to go away, and everything remained weirdly dark and cold in his head.

His mother came to practice with him more often, now. At first he thought she'd been able to tell that something was _wrong_ with him, but when he said, carefully, that she didn't have to come if she didn't want to -

"It's - my mother. She always tried to watch you play, even - even towards the end. Now I have to do the same."

She looked a lot like grandmother with her face set in stubbornness. Leo's eyes widened. "Do you think - maybe. Maybe she's still watching me?"

"Yeah. Of course she is," his mother said, and she was smiling for the first time in days, although her eyes looked wet. "Of course she is. You never saw, but the way she used to smile when you scored a goal - oh, Leo."

 

* * *

 

The next time he scored a goal, he looked up at the heavens, and thought as hard as he could, _this is for you. All of these are for you._

The black never went away, not completely. But it never bothered him again when he was playing football. And sometimes, if he strained really hard, he could almost see her smile again, in that brief, eternal moment right after he scored.

 

* * *

 

A few months later, his father came to pick him up from training with a face like a storm cloud.

"Dad? What's wrong?"

His father hesitated, looking around to make sure no one else was in earshot before continuing. "We've got trouble. The club want to take you to a specialist doctor for a medical."

Leo didn't understand what the problem was, and said so. After all, he'd had routine medicals before, and nothing had come up. His protections had worked to make him as similar to a real child born of his parents as possible - or so his father had explained after the first one, years ago.

"No, they want to do more thorough tests to make sure there's nothing wrong with your health. Leo, you have to promise me. Promise they won't find anything - anything strange."

Leo would have said anything just then, if it would chase the scared look off his father's face. "I promise."

After all, what could go wrong?

 

* * *

 

A week went by with no news, and Leo had almost forgotten about the tests he'd had to do until he came home from school and found his parents sitting at the dinner table, a manila envelope in the space between them, their hands clasped together on top.

His father got up hastily at the sight of him, chair scraping loudly against the floor, and knelt down until he could look Leo in the eye.

"There's something we need to tell you." 

Something about the way his father was looking at him was so strange and unsettling Leo couldn't think past it to form words. The back of his head itched. He nodded.

"They found a problem."

It was as if someone had set off a flare in his brain.

"How - "

"No, not that." His father took a deep breath. "They think you're sick, because your growth glands aren't working properly. They're - asleep, so you can't get taller. Do you know why?"

"I - I don't understand."

And then the _timing_ hit him like a physical blow, and he did.

 

* * *

 

In his sleep, he saw the creeping dark that had come after grandmother died seeping under his skin, twisting everything up so it stopped changing and growing, and woke up knowing that it hadn't been a nightmare.

 

* * *

 

It was treatable, the doctor said. Treatable but very expensive. Could they raise the money somehow?

His father pressed his lips together, the lines on his face deepening. "We'll find a way."

In the car on the way home, Leo squeezed his eyes closed so he didn't have to see the helplessness on his father's face.

"Dad, I'm sorry," he whispered into the dark.

Strong arms wrapped around his middle. "Don't be. It's not your fault. None of this is your fault."

Nobody said anything, not to him, but Leo could tell his parents didn't know what to do about the cost. It was a lot of money. He was so mad at himself, at his stupid body, at what passed for his head and everything weird that went on inside it. All he ended up doing was making more trouble for his family, every single time.

If only he could do something to make their lives better. 

_Anything,_ he promised himself. _As long as it helps them, I'll do anything._

 

* * *

 

Leo did the injections himself, once every night. The syringe was big, and it hurt, but he hardly noticed. As the liquid went into his leg, he pictured his own insides, red and all twisted together, untangling into lines that made sense.

"Let me help," his mother kept saying, the first few weeks. "I can't watch you do this."

He smiled through the ache in his legs and kissed her cheek. "It's okay. I'll manage."

_I made this happen. I can't let anybody else do this for me. Not after everything else._

He played his football for Newell's now, a big club who had the money to pay for a bit of the treatment. That, at least, was good - he was paying his own way, for his own mistakes. But as he was coming to understand, no club would spend big money on a little kid.

 

* * *

 

Two years after the treatments started, the money dried up.

**[12 years ago]**

Newell's stopped paying for the treatments, and his parents had already exhausted all their savings. For a while, it seemed like he'd have to forget about growing to his full height. That was fine. That Leo could take. But it would mean the end of his football career too, and _that_ was unacceptable.

His life revolved around the ball. Without it, he didn't know what he'd be.

"I could get you into a trial at one of the bigger clubs. Maybe they'd pay," his father said. He was trying to put on a brave face for Leo, but it wasn't hard to see through it to the worry underneath. Leo hated the thought that he was the cause.

"Let's try."

 

* * *

 

It turned out River Plate couldn't or didn't want to pay, but none of that mattered, in the end. A few weeks after they'd sent him home with the bad news, Leo came home from school to find his father staring blankly at the phone, looking shell-shocked.

"Dad?"

"That was someone from Barcelona. They heard about what happened with River. They said - they said you should go to Spain for a trial."

"Barca?" Leo whispered. "Barca wants me?" 

It didn't even sound real when he said it out loud. But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like a good solution to their problems. Surely they'd be able to afford to pay for his treatment and more besides, if he could convince them he was worth it.

If.

 

* * *

 

Barcelona was an entirely different world to the steel and dust and gentle sunshine of Rosario. It was beautiful and strange and it was almost as if Leo could smell the sea on the air.

Here, his accent - the edges of words sandpapered down into nothing - sounded strange to his own ears. Alien.

Leo checked into a tiny hotel room with his father and waited for Barca to call.

 

* * *

 

They waited for a month.

"Maybe we should go home," Leo said hesitantly.

Going home was the last thing he wanted. Barca was his last, best hope, and beyond that he could see nothing else. But they couldn't wait forever.

"Five more days. We'll stay five more days, and then if Mister Rexach is still not back, we head home, and we'll find another way." His father gave a strained smile and ruffled his hair. "All right?"

The smile made the lines on his face stand out, and Leo thought with a sudden lurch of his heart that his father looked almost - old. It was as if he'd aged ten years in the last three. Leo made that happen, when he couldn't cope with being sad and screwed up his stupid, weird body.

_Idiot._

Now his eyes were wet. He stared hard at the ground, hoping that his father wouldn't notice. "I - I'm sorry. You never should have taken me in."

"No. Never say that again," his father said sharply. "What would your grandmother think?"

Leo looked up, startled. "But - "

His father hugged him so hard he could hardly breathe. "You're a gift, not a curse. Always remember that. We're all depending on you."

There was a strange, warm feeling in his chest. Leo buried his face in his father's sweater and thought fiercely that he was going to make a success of this trip if it killed him.

 

* * *

 

Leo's world shifted when he saw the Camp Nou for the first time. The wave of longing that swept through him was so strong it tinted his entire world in blues and reds, and he knew, he just knew that he had to play there. 

After that, the trial seemed routine. All they wanted was to see him play with the age group above him. Bigger guys trying to scare him off the ball was nothing new. Actually, it was kind of comfortingly familiar. He knew exactly what to do, as long as he had the ball.

_I am not afraid,_ Leo thought. And he wasn't.

 

* * *

 

It took a terrifyingly long time, but finally Barca agreed to pay for everything and even employ his father, and they took the good news back home, where Leo made his father put the decision before the entire family.

"Should we all go to Spain?"

"Yeah, of course," Rodrigo said immediately. "Why are we even discussing this?"

"You understand that you'd have to get used to a new country, new schools..." his mother said sternly.

Matias shrugged. "I don't care. Come on, Leo gets to play for Barca, how awesome is that?"

"I - I don't want you to give up everything for me," Leo said quietly, staring down at the kitchen table.

There was a short silence, followed by the scraping of chairs, and then he was being hugged within an inch of his life by Rodrigo. "Tough, kid. That's our choice. You just worry about the football."

 

* * *

 

In truth, none of them settled well, and his mother had to go back with his brothers and Maria Sol. Rodrigo and Matias couldn't stop apologizing to him in the days before they left, and even years later Leo still sees guilt in their eyes, sometimes, when they think he's not looking.

He'll never stop trying to make them feel better. Because it was enough that they had wanted to be with him, enough that they tried, and with those efforts gave him more strength than any injections ever had.

If he got good enough to provide for all of them, it would only begin to pay back what he owes.

**[9 years ago]**

What football meant to Leo changed when he started playing for Barca. Before, the ball was his own treasure, his anchor to the world. He didn't know how to share it with anyone else.

At _La Masia_ , they taught the value of sharing, how it made everything easier, and how, with a little practice, it could make something incredible.

That was the first time Leo understood that sharing his anchor didn't mean losing it. It just meant that everyone got to have that same connection.

The world outside his window was as foreign to him as Rosario had been, all those years ago.

But the game was the same, and the game had its own language.

 

* * *

 

When Leo was very small, his parents had been very worried about other people finding out. They thought he'd blurt out something, because that was what kids did, and then everything would be ruined. 

It hadn't taken his mother long to realise that there was no danger of Leo blurting anything out to anyone. Aside from Cintia, he hardly spoke to any of the other kids. Just enough to set up kickabouts, most of the time. His friends learned to read his silences.

Leo didn't let himself miss home much. When he did, he thought of Cintia a lot. It had been nice to have someone else who knew the truth about him, someone he could picture telling and someone who didn't seem to care, because she knew him inside out, and that mattered more to her than where Leo had come from.

Being able to keep playing meant everything, but it couldn't make him forget that, or stop wanting it.

 

* * *

 

Leo liked international tournaments. Not so much the travelling, but tournaments meant more football he could play, and that was good. 

It also meant he got to spend time with the rest of the team off the pitch, which was - weird. Most of them had known each other for years before Leo came along, and it showed. He never felt more out of place than when the loudest and most disruptive of them - also known as Gerard Pique and Cesc Fabregas - got going.

This time he was sitting - huddled, almost - beside Victor, who he liked for letting his silences stand, and who had begun giving Leo worried looks. 

"If you guys don't settle down, I'm going to hurt someone. Probably you, Pique."

Leo felt a rush of gratitude. He hadn't been - he didn't mind the other two play-fighting, not really, but the idea that Victor would stand up to his own friends just because he thought Leo was uncomfortable was - 

He hid his smile in Victor's shoulder.

"At least then I wouldn't be bored," Gerard said with a long-suffering sigh. He managed to sound dignified even though Cesc still had him in a headlock. " _Someone_ forgot to bring his controllers, so we can't even play ProEvo."

Cesc released him with an annoyed huff, mostly, Leo thought, so he could free up his hands and put them on his hips. "Oh, so it's all my fault, is it?"

"For once in your life, you're spot on," Gerard said sagely, and promptly wrestled Cesc to the couch.

Strangely, Leo found the corners of his mouth turning up. "I was never here," he said, and pretended to shuffle towards the door.

He was half expecting to be ignored. Instead, Cesc giggled and Gerard let go of Cesc to mime fainting of shock. 

"Oh my God, he speaks!"

"Geri!" Cesc hissed, jabbing his elbow into Gerard's side. Then, under his breath, "stop that. He's gonna think you're a dick."

"'He' happens to have a Playstation," Leo muttered, not particularly quietly.

"Oh! Really." Gerard wrapped his arms around Leo's waist and picked him up off the ground. "You're my new best friend. Sorry, Fabregas."

Cesc rolled his eyes. "Sometimes I don't remember why I put up with this bastard," he said in a very loud mock-whisper, and grinned at Leo. Like he was inviting Leo to share the joke.

Leo grinned back, and didn't duck his head to hide it.

 

* * *

 

Leo broke a bone in his cheek in his second official game.

He didn't know it at the time. A defender had swung an elbow right into his face as they both jumped for a high ball, and the pain in his ankle from the awkward fall took up all his attention at first.

All Leo could see for a moment was Cesc's worried face, ghostly pale. Distantly, he heard one of the other guys shouting. That big beanpole Gerard, probably. Leo had to grin at the thought. Tried to grin, anyway.

Then the pain kicked in.

 

* * *

 

"...and then Geri punched him. It was amazing," Cesc said, grinning and miming someone being struck. As usual, he managed to make a small on-pitch brawl sound like a grand adventure. "You should have seen it."

"I did. Kind of. You guys didn't have to do that."

Cesc shrugged. "Yeah, I know. But you're new, and you dribble like you don't give a damn about defenders. People are gonna pick on you, just to see what you're made of." Leo reflexively touched his cheek at that, just above the healing bone break, and Cesc's face darkened. "We're not gonna let anyone fuck with you, okay? Don't you worry."

"I wasn't," Leo said indignantly, trying not to blush and probably failing.

"Of course not," Cesc shrugged, before fixing Leo with a steady look that made him want to squirm. "Still, it's better to know, isn't it?"

Leo didn't need protecting. Even so, it had been...nice.

Cesc was dangerous like that - he acted careless, like he was just another kid, when really he was always watching, always learning. Sometimes it made Leo feel transparent, like Cesc could give him one of those weirdly penetrating looks and know all his secrets.

"Yeah."

 

* * *

 

As he got older, Leo wondered: when was it safe to tell someone? How would he know? 

All he knew was that he had this enormous secret, one that went to the heart of what he was, and yet he spent so much time not even thinking about it. 99% of the time he was just another kid trying to become a decent footballer. Then he'd feel that strange itch in the back of his head when someone asked about his family, and remember that he wasn't like them at all.

Sometimes it felt like this big, scary thing, when he thought about it. He'd remember his mother telling him to be careful, to keep his secrets.

It was true. He did have to be careful. But sometimes he just had to share it before it burst him like a over-filled balloon.

 

* * *

 

When he told Gerard and Cesc, they didn't believe him.

Gerard even said _prove it_ , so he reached into their heads and undid what he thought of as the knot tying the story together.

"Oooh, that itches," Gerard said. He didn't sound scared.

Something in Leo eased, and his next breath came easier.

Cesc's eyes were as wide as dinner plates. "That was you? Wow, amazing."

"Do you believe me now?"

"But you look like your parents," Cesc said, very reasonably.

"If I'd been adopted into your family, I'd look like yours."

"Creepy." It was obvious that Gerard meant nothing, but Leo still flinched visibly. When he could make himself meet Gerard's eyes again, Gerard looked horrified. "Uh - wait! I mean - sorry. You're not creepy. I - I'm just going to shut up now."

"You do that," Cesc said sharply. He tugged Leo in against his side. "Leo, ignore the idiot."

"...I'm so sorry."

Leo had never heard Gerard sound that serious about anything. The thought made him grin. "It's fine. You're not gonna ask if it - "

"If that's why you're so good? Nah."

Cesc glanced over at Gerard. Sometimes they did this thing where they looked to the other one to have the right words at a given moment, and it was those moments of wordless communication that made Leo really feel like he wasn't one of them. Then they'd all step on the pitch together and he'd learn all over again just how wrong that was.

"No offence, Leo, but that'd be a really stupid superpower."

Leo rolled his eyes. "Shut up, who doesn't want to be good at football?"

 

* * *

 

Then Cesc left. Not long after that, Gerard left too.

They never talked about it, Leo and Gerard, not until Gerard was ready to move to England. Even with someone like Gerard, talking was hard.

The training center TVs were playing an old Barca game, one with Rivaldo. Leo didn't like watching football much, but even he couldn't take his eyes off it. Rivaldo played so well he might have been a different species to everyone else on the pitch.

"Guys like that...they're special," Gerard said, when it was half-time. He sounded serious, for once. "Only special people get to be stars like that."

Leo shrugged. "I guess."

"Like you, Leo."

"I don't know what you mean."

Gerard grabbed his shoulders and looked intently at him, almost glaring. "You're far better than everyone else in the age group. You know that, right? Tell me you know that."

"We're all waiting for our chance," Leo said quietly. "I'll be ready for it."

"Me and Cesc, we can't wait. But that's not - it doesn't mean we wanted to leave. You know what I mean, right."

"I know. You're not leaving me."

Leo found a smile for Gerard, somehow, and immediately found himself smothered in a bear hug. 

"We would never do that. Never. Got it?"

**[6 years ago]**

Things happened very fast once Leo hit 16. He played and played and suddenly he was doing what he always did in front of a packed Camp Nou.

His brain shorted out when the people in the stadium started chanting his name, like the waves of noise had jolted something loose in the back of his head.

It was the most amazing thing he'd ever felt.

Afterwards, listening to his mother cry on a crap phone line, pulling herself together to tell him, "I'm so proud of you, and mother would be too, she'd be so happy to see you today, oh Leo - "

No, maybe that was the most amazing.

 

* * *

 

A part of him expected it all to fall into place, after that. Playing at Camp Nou, learning to combine with his new team-mates, making something greater out of all their different parts - it felt like all he'd ever wanted, and it felt right.

Then he started getting injured, again and again. 

Most often it was a hamstring or some other muscle problem, and it came with the kind of familiar, creeping cold in his mind that scared Leo more than anything else. He could only hope that there was some normal, medical explanation, something that didn't involve his stupid, _different_ body.

"Why do I get hurt so often?" he asked the doctors, dreading the answer.

Doctor Cugat sighed. "We're not sure."

**[4 years ago]**

Football was the most reliable thing in Leo's life. It never changed; it was brilliant, necessary, and a way for him to take care of his family.

The injuries didn't stop either.

"You need to look after yourself better," Pep said gently but firmly, when they first met.

"I'll try."

Increasingly, though, Leo thought he knew what the real problem was.

 

* * *

 

It took him a while to work up the courage to do what he had to. A while to decide that he could trust Pep with everything, and that trusting his team-mates on the football pitch meant trusting them with himself, as well.

"I don't like to talk much." That got him a few grins. "But today, I want to tell you something important about me. Something I think you should all know." 

The next breath he took felt cleaner.

**[present day]**

When Leo first started out, it was difficult not to wonder how far his powers stretched. If maybe too many people knowing his name, his story, would make it snap like an elastic band.

But the reality is the complete opposite. People believe in him now, and sometimes it feels like their belief is a tangible thing, that it's gone through his body and rearranged every cell completely.

[Well I've always had a wild imagination/And a see-through heart  
Which I know can be, a wild combination/Like a flame forms from a spark  
But don't be shy, be brave little champion/It's better to live than to hide

Well that's just me, before we met]  
 _noah and the whale - just me before we met_  


**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The Messi family: dad Jorge, mom Celia Cuccittini, older brothers Rodrigo, Matias, and younger sister Maria Sol. Celia's mother, the famous grandmother who we all have to thank for getting Leo into football, was also named Celia. (There's a documentary in which Celia and Jorge discuss how proud her mother would be if she could see Leo today, and it gives me all the feelings.)
> 
> 2\. Go watch this interview with [Salvador Aparicio](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SUWYKNLqVKE) and you'll see why he also gives me all the feelings.
> 
> 3\. [Cintia Arellano is a real person](http://i55.tinypic.com/zxn0n6.png)! She used to pass Leo notes with exam answers on them.
> 
> 4\. If you're curious about the many ways in which Barca almost managed to botch the Messi signing, Graham Hunter's _Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World_ has the gory details.
> 
> 5\. Victor Vazquez was talked of in the same breath as Cesc, Gerard and Leo from the La Masia Class of '87 for many years. He was just as promising as anyone else on that team, before his career at Barca was derailed by a series of awful injuries. He's now at Club Brugge in Belgium.
> 
> 6\. ProEvo = Pro Evolution Soccer, the most popular football simulator video game amongst the pros before the FIFA series overtook it, sometime in the past six years.
> 
> 7\. Gerard's weird comment about special players comes from something he said once upon a time about Leo.
> 
> 8\. Leo has spoken about how upset his mother used to get when they talked on the phone. 
> 
> 9\. This fic owes a lot to various documentaries and the book _Messi_ by Luca Caioli.
> 
>  
> 
> Dear OP: I'm so sorry this took over a year to finish. That's ridiculous. I hope you enjoy the results, regardless.


End file.
